


Tiny

by lousy_science



Category: Colossal (2016)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 11:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11850471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: After Seoul, the world keeps spinning. Gloria is working out how to stay on.





	Tiny

To save four hundred dollars, Gloria flew back from Korea via Los Angeles. She had booked a connecting flight to New York that left six hours after she landed back in the States. Enough time, she figured, to find free wifi and have some frozen yogurt. When the call for passengers to JFK was being announced, she was already waiting at the gate, her ticket in hand, eyes fixed on the airline staff checking people in. All she had to do was walk forward, show the ticket to the blonde lady at the desk, and get on the plane. 

She could imagine doing that. What she couldn’t imagine was what she would do when the plane arrived and the airline staff expected her to disembark and somehow go back out there. 

Walking out of LAX, she used her passport to shade her eyes from the blinding blue sky. She would need to get sunglasses. And other things. A place to sleep that night, somewhere to charge her phone. A job. But first she would get on a bus and think about sunglasses for as long as she could manage. 

Gloria was on record as loathing Los Angeles. A couple of years back she’d written a story about it, drafted on a red-eye flight to New York and named by a sub-editor, “Three Days in L.A. Reminded Me Why It’s the Literal Worst Place on Earth”. That had been a hair less subtle than Gloria would’ve have gone for, personally, but close enough to the spirit of the piece. It had led to the usual bombardment in the comments section and on Twitter, though most of the commenters hated the city as well. They just hated her more. 

“As you get older, you embrace the things you used to hold in contempt”. It was something a guy she drank with once told her; he’d been one of those aging Brooklyn scenesters who was nudging forty and still hadn’t sold his debut novel. One afternoon he mentioned he was moving out to the suburbs. Someone had spat out, _so much for your punk cred_ , and he’d lowered his beer and said it, like it was the first time anyone had put the thought into words, like he was giving them all a pearl. 

Gloria had probably said she’d go visit him and his girlfriend out there, but now she couldn’t remember their names, or anything about them, really, apart from that one line in one dingy bar. She’d known what he was telling them, that he’d given up on his old dreams to find some new source of meaning. Joke was on him, because having a meaningful structure in your life was something Gloria had been heavily invested in rejecting. She spent the next few years making reinforcing that, first in bars, then in blog posts, essays, magazine articles, and nihilistic social media posts. 

It was an easy philosophy to apply to any hot take - hey, you, screaming over there; you can go ahead and have your ambitions and ideals, but don’t try to sell me on one particular barrel of bullshit over another, because even a cursory examination of the circumstances we find ourselves in reveals it all to be bullshit. Rinse and repeat. Even after she’d been shitcanned for blowing too many deadlines, she always had social media, until eventually even that got to be too much emotional maintenance. 

There were big parts of her life that she could barely recall. In writer’s workshops there would always be readings of meticulously-written descriptions of someone’s fourth grade classroom, or a child’s eye view of a family tragedy. Gloria often wondered where her hoard of precious memories, ready to be mined for a short story collection printed by a small but critically respected press, were meant to be. When she stretched back to childhood all she could come up with was the DuckTales theme song and a vague dread of math lessons. She didn’t feel she had the necessary youthful trauma to write about, and that was one of the reasons she stopped going to writer’s workshops. 

You could read some of the others in her third-most-popular post, “Why I Gave Up On Writer’s Workshops - I Don’t Care About Your Bedwetting Story”. 

But there was a limit to the amount of things Gloria could not care about, and she’d reached it miles and miles ago. And now she was on the West Coast, in America’s capital of caring about things, regardless of their bullshit quotient. 

She walked off a plane from Korea and into Los Angeles, and spent eight months with her expired plane ticket to New York tucked in her passport. It was a reminder, though Gloria wasn’t sure what it was reminding her of. But there were other things for her to do in this city, which is why she was spending this Wednesday afternoon sitting in a nearly-empty restaurant waiting for a woman she’d never met to come in and talk to her. 

Anticipating what the two of them could talk about had seized Gloria with a persistent nervous energy. Last night she’d raced through her evening shift at the restaurant, and spent the morning dealing with her email inbox with a ruthless efficiency, finally getting a freelance invoice paid, editing two pieces of copy, and completing a week’s worth of language lessons. 

This restaurant was similar to many of the Korean places she’d eaten at over the last eight months. She’d started with the three in her immediate neighborhood, and then with recommendations from the other servers at the upscale place where she was waiting tables. 

Everyone in Los Angeles could talk about food, and where to eat it, for hours. They could also tell you what they weren’t eating right now - nightshades because of inflammation, legumes because of paleo, gluten because eating bread was essentially suicide. 

Mr. Yoon liked hearing Gloria’s stories about picky eaters. Last week she’d told him, “Today I served a woman who insisted nothing on her plate be too crispy, because she was allergic to crispiness.”

“Allergic to crispiness? No, she did not say that!”

“She did! I tried to get her to order the soup, but she couldn’t risk a crouton.”

Mr. Yoon owned the H-Mart, the neighborhood store where Gloria went for her doenjang paste and sweet potato snacks. He helped her branch out nutritionally beyond packets of bulgogi-flavored noodles and choco pies, and let her practice speaking Korean with him. He was her best friend. 

She’d greeted him one day with her attempt at an “Anneyong hysayeo”, and instead of rolling his eyes or looking blasé, he’d been friendly. Most mornings she went down to the H-Mart as soon as she’d gotten up to show him her hangul practice and get a free orange if he decided her calligraphy was improving. 

“How are you Gloria? What is today’s special at your restaurant?”

“We’re doing sea bass with a green pea puree,” she’d tell him, adding conspiratorially, “I think it’d be better with namul.”

“Of course, Gloria - everything is better with namul.”

When he asked her about her social life (“Many boyfriends?"), she said he wasn’t dating much. That she wanted to concentrate on work. “Work” was something she’d happily discuss with Mr. Yoon, whether it was the upscale ‘farm-to-table’ place she worked as a server four days a week, or the freelance editing jobs she was picking up. She mentioned that she wanted to make more friends - “ _not_ boyfriends. Not right now.”

That’s why he’d told her she should meet his niece, “a good girl, your age.”

Gloria wondered what a good girl, her age, was like. In her mind, Suzy Yoon would have a designer wardrobe, a very precise haircut, flawless makeup, no interest in Flannery O’Connor, or how good a craft beer tasted after a hit from a joint, or internet pettiness, or any single other thing that Gloria had built her identity around in her twenties. Neither of them were in their twenties anymore, so they had that in common.

Suzy was dressed in an oversized blazer, buttoned-up, looking like she was going for a job interview. She looked like she’d be more at home on the East Coast, where wearing layers and not making eye contact were a way of life. When Gloria stood up to shake her hand she didn’t smile back, but held steady eye contact.

As Gloria had expected, she was made up in a very diligent but understated manner, with short nails with immaculate white tips. She wore pastels, which made Gloria feel like a Victorian widow in dingy black. Their server approached the table looking furious, snapping that the fish stew Suzy wanted wasn’t available, rolling his eyes at Gloria’s pronunciation of bibim naengmyeon. Somehow they got through ordering their food, no drinks, just water, and once the server walked away things shifted a little.

“You said it fine. He’s just being a jerk.”

Gloria said thanks. She was about to say something about how understandable it was that he would be annoyed by rando white people trying out the language now that Korea was ‘cool’ for all the worst reasons, but the server came back to slam their water glasses on the table.

Her plan had been to give Suzy a convincing reason why she, this particular rando white person, was learning Korean, just as soon as she had worked out what approach would go over best. She had prepared three answers, all little slivers of the truth, but in such small proportions that they were basically lies. “I wanted to understand”; “I needed a hobby”; “I thought I could help”. If none of those seemed likely to work, there was the back-up - “I got really into K-drama.” 

But, distracted by mopping up puddles of spilt water from the table, they slipped into chit-chat about their favorite sheet masks, preferred traffic routes, how bullshit the new season of The Bachelorette was. 

It was Suzy who came back to the subject of rando white people’s interest in Korea. She mentioned the New York Times article that had run a week ago, promptly leading to several Twitter infernos. It was on the phenomenon of ‘Monsterstans’, and was written by a very good, very sharp young Korean-American journalist. Gloria didn’t know her personally, but she told Suzy she’d known writers like her in J-School. 

“They were the ones who did all of the assigned reading, and made sure they understood stuff like fair use and libel laws, then would come to the bar only after filing a thousand words of perfect copy.”

“And that wasn’t you?”

“No, I always went to the bar first. I thought that was my primary duty as a journalist, to drink in the tradition of Hemingway and Dorothy Parker. By my second semester, I had discovered that whiskey was something you could become a specialist in. That was also my last semester. Which is why Sallie Mae owns my ass, and I’m not writing for the Times. Not that I should be the person writing that story.”

“But you did write about it, though.”

Suzy leaned back. Mr. Yoon was right about his niece, she was smart, and she’d done her research. Gloria had written about Korea, a short piece for a listings magazine on a Silverlake deli. They were selling kimchi-flavored gelato as a #RebuildSeoul fundraiser. 

Gloria considered her reply, rocking her head back and forth. “I could’ve done a hit piece on them, they were clearly using the fundraiser as a PR opportunity. But I figured that could be read between the lines. And I’m in no position to call out people for that - I’ve used someone else’s tragedy to promote my own work before.” 

If Suzy had found the Silverlake article, she must have found Gloria’s other clips. Seen her most popular story of all time, “Why My Best Friend’s Death Didn’t Make Me a Better Person”. If Gloria died tomorrow, the obit would read, ‘The controversial former columnist was best known for writing about skipping her friend’s funeral to go drinking.’ It was the Freebird of her back catalogue, the one essay everyone had read, melded to her name in Google search results like white on rice. 

There had been a time when Gloria had thought it was the worst thing she’d ever done. 

Suzy took a sip of water. “I knew who you were. Before that. I used to read your stuff quite often. I even subscribed to your Facebook page, but you didn’t post much there. People used to be very critical about your work there.”

Gloria shrugged. “That’s how the internet works. I was just another person online with an opinion. A woman, even.”

“Which is always worse.”

“Generally, sometimes... I don’t know. Maybe? I bet that New York Times writer is getting a million times worse stuff than I did. She wrote about how so-called ‘fans’, mostly white, mostly American, created a cult around a traumatic Korean event, and how toxic it’s become. Trolling the families of people who died. Conspiracy theories. All the racist stuff that came out when the donations were being organised,” Gloria sighed. “The whole white saviour stuff, which I think she handled well in the article, but c’mon. Subtlety is not the internet’s strong point. There’s going to be this huge group of people screaming, _why isn’t she more grateful?_ ”

Suzy nodded. “There are people on my Facebook, Korean friends, who say they wish she hadn’t written about it.”

“What do you think?” Gloria knew she might be torpedoing her friend date by asking her that, when Suzy had been nice enough to come along and meet some strange lady who was obsessed with learning Korean. There were a lot of strange people who suddenly wanted to learn Korean, and Gloria didn’t begrudge her an ounce of resentment. 

But she needed to have this out. Because her motives were too big to be obscured by any level of politeness. 

“I read things like that,” Suzy said, slowly, as if it was the first time she’d articulated the idea, “and I feel… wary for the writer. Pride, misplaced pride, that a Korean-American woman is doing it. And I don’t usually buy into stuff like, we all have a singular identity, because there’s too many of us - that’s what Seoul taught me, seeing how different the reactions in our community were. Not that it’s bad, it was just too much,” 

She wavered, the words escaping her. Gloria said, “Too much - too big?”

“No one has ever dealt with anything like this before, how the hell are Koreans meant to? What is the ‘correct’ Korean response? There isn’t one.”

“Right.” 

“So what I wanted was perspectives. As many as possible. And they came, mostly from non-Koreans at first, but now there are more and more voices. And I want to read all of them.”

“Do you write?” Gloria was leaning forward, and she noticed Suzy was, too. They both ignored the hovering server who was trying to grab their abandoned dishes.

“Not much. Not like you. I wrote in a journal every day when I was a teenager, though. I loved to read, books, novels mainly. Jane Austen, Anne of Green Gables, Georgette Heyer.”

“Love stories.”

Suzy laughed. “Then years later you wrote that thing, a takedown of the romance genre - I read it, and hated you.”

“That wasn’t about - ” Gloria tried to not be defensive in everyday interactions anymore, but she let her hands fly up, “Jane Austen! That was shitty rom-coms.”

“I loved rom-coms! I had a big _How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days_ poster in my dorm room. My first chatroom handle was katehudson84.”

“It was _not_.”

“It was too!” 

Gloria laughed. This was as good as bar talk. This was what people did for fun, she reminded herself, when they didn’t need to drink. “I don’t take any of it back.”

“You don’t have to. I kept reading you after that, and I liked most of your stuff. I never thought I’d end up having lunch with you.” 

“I never thought I’d end up having lunch with a Kate Hudson fan, so…”

Suzy screwed up her face. “ _Almost Famous_ justifies everything.”

“I am not going to argue that. Mainly because I think you’d stab me with a chopstick.”

“That’s what white people always ask me - why do Koreans use metal chopsticks?”

“For the stabbing?”

“Maybe.” Suzy lifted a chopstick and looked at it like she’d never seen one before. 

Gloria sipped water, thought about beer. She said, “You know, your Uncle is an awesome guy.”

Rolling her eyes, Suzy replied, “I’m glad you think so.”

“He’s so great! He’s been really nice to me.”

“He’s family, you know how it is.” She shot a look over at Gloria, who had never mentioned her family, and changed her tone as she said, “I love him, he’s a big teddy bear, but since I broke up with my boyfriend, he and my parents are just,” she shrugged, “completely annoying. They don’t understand why I’m not dating again, why I couldn’t make it work with Tae-soo.”

“When did you two break up?”

“About six months ago. I mean. Five months and three days ago, to be honest. I still tally it up. We were about to announce our engagement, after being together for four years.” 

“Four years? Damn. You need more than six months to deal with that.”

“Right? And _he_ dumped _me_.”

Gloria shook her head and levelled her voice. “You absolutely do not have to be dating again.”

“I’m not. I mean, Tinder in LA, I don’t even want to think about it,”

“Total horror show.”

“Do you? Date? See people?” Suzy was waving the chopstick idly in the air.

“Oh no, I, heh,” Gloria didn’t want to spill too much, not while making a friend, a real female non-party acquaintance friend, the first in a long time. But Suzy lived here, in the city of eternal self-help. She had probably heard it all before. 

Gloria breathed in and out. “I’m sober, but it’s early days, aaaaaaaand...we’re not meant to date. In the program.” She made air quotes. “‘The Program’. So I’m just sitting it out for a few rounds.”

“Good for you.” Suzy didn’t sound sarcastic or glib. She waved over the server for the bill. “I better get going soonish.”

They split the meal 50/50. Gloria thought of all the things she’d planned to say, of how she had planned to explain why she was learning Korean in a way that distanced herself from the Monsterstans and grief vampires, how carefully she’d planned her reasoning. But Suzy had surprised her, and her scripts were unused.

Probably, she concluded, it was for the best. Friendships drew together from little things, that’s why they called it smalltalk. They both had been dumped, they both liked frozen yogurt, neither of them could see the point in cold pressed juice. She offered Suzy a Smint as they walked out talking about getting manicures and how they could go see the new Kate Hudson movie.

Later, Suzy would tell her that she’d gone home and Googled for leather jackets, wanting one like Gloria had. That she didn’t think she could ever be a leather jacket person, and wasn’t sure if she could be friends with one. Gloria would tell her over and over to ditch the boxy blazers, that they swallowed her up, and dragged her to a vintage boutique downtown to try on alternatives and practice her flirting with the cute boys behind the counter.

But that was later, after the first WhatsApp message from Suzy had come through, at 8pm on the dot. It said that she usually got her nails done at a place near the H-Mart, would Gloria like to come along next time? Gloria searched online for a picture of the gaudiest nails she could find, ten portraits of Pope Francis covered in cubic zirconias. “Yes please! I want to get something like this?” 

Suzy didn’t reply that Gloria was funny or LOLworthy or haha. She said, “I will stab you with a chopstick if you ask for those.” 

She ended her message with a little emoji party hat. Gloria felt that, for the first time in months, she was ready to party. Just a tiny bit. 

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to [zjofierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose) and [takhallus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takhallus/pseuds/takhallus) for beta duty. Any errors, particularly any egregious misuses of Korean, are mine.


End file.
